I went on my first and only blind date when I was living in Manhattan circa 2006. When I walked into our meeting spot of choice, The Half Pint, I realized the bar’s title was a sign of things to come: my date couldn’t have been more than 5’3. Yep, from the get-go I already knew it was going to be a bad night. Through the course of 45 minutes, the guy insulted me, my job and my opinions. He was a balding egomaniac with a mommy’s boy complex, and I couldn’t stand him. I made an excuse for ending the evening early and proceeded to slink off in the opposite direction so that I wouldn’t have to talk to him any longer than I absolutely had to. That said, I wish that FirstDateHell had been in existence… although I don’t think I could have confined my bile to 140 characters back then.

Bad dates... tweet them?

FirstDateHell is a cool concept. We all have war stories, and now we have a place to share them. Consider this Twitter page to be a community for despondent daters; you’ll be happy to realize that you’re not alone and that others might even have had it worse than you.

The Tweet-friendly forum and its sister site, Crapdate.com, were founded by London-based columnist and tech writer Rhodri Marsden, who launched the site after remembering a particularly bad date. His lone tweet prompted so many responses from his 17,000 followers that he decided to set up FirstDateHell as a platform for dating discussion.

“I think us British can be so emotionally feeble… we can have such a constipated communication problem. So we have trouble saying to people’s faces ‘Look, this isn’t working, nice to meet you, but I’m going home.’ Instead, we sit there for hours with someone dreadful. As a result we might become terribly unhappy, but boy, do we pick up some good stories,” Marsden said in an email to ABCNews.com when discussing why the site works, in particular, for his native Brits.

But it isn’t just those from the U.K. that have a problem with communicating. Terrible first dates are something that everyone can respond to. You’re telling me there hasn’t even been a woman in France that’s said, ‘Mon dieu! Why does my date have such bad body odor?’ or a guy in Brazil who’s lamented, ‘She’s just not my type. She doesn’t even know how to salsa!’?

What about the die-hard online daters, who finally met HotBlueEyedGuy63 for the first time, only to discover the nine photos he posted were from 1997, his paunch exceeded his brains or you had a hard time deciding which bothered you more — his liver spots or his receding hairline. I bet their FirstDateHell stories would be entertaining as, well, hell.

Photo by SingleGirlBlogging

The point is, regardless of how painful all of these evenings may have been, they’re providing us with a community, with laughter and the knowledge that things could, indeed, be worse. It makes me feel better to tell you all my war story about my dire date, despite having the battle scar to go with it. Still, I’d rather be scarred and happy then stuck and miserable. Wouldn’t you agree?

Check Out The Top Seven FirstDateHell Tweets

1.DewGirl99: “1st date asked me at dinner if my breasts were real. Said he would only date me if they were implants. Told him he would never know.”

About the Author: Laura Schreffler is a former New York Daily News columnist who left the world of celebrity behind to focus on what makes her happiest — love and travel. She is the creator of LoveTrekker.com — a website devoted to these two passions that she fondly calls “looking for love in all the right places.” In her spare time she likes to play matchmaker for her friends, dream about her next vacation and gaze at photographs of Taylor Kitsch. For more advice on love, relationships, and happiness, check out http://lovetrekker.com & her book "Internet Dating 101". And follow her here at Happiness Series with her weekly blog about finding love.